The Inspiration

EDUCATIONAL NOTES

The Poem

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is about a man on a voyage by ship, who in one unpremeditated and heinous act, changes the course of his life and curses all on board. The Mariner kills the great sea bird, the Albatross, on a whim, with no forethought about the act or its consequences. The bird posed no danger to the Mariner or the men on the ship and, in fact, was a symbol of God’s favor, a spiritual guide to safeguard their journey.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a literary critic and poet, was born in Devon, England in 1772. He was the founder of the English Romantic period, a movement characterized by imagination, passion and the supernatural.

Relevance Today

OLD METAPHORS FOR MODERN TIMES

By Michael Seiden

You are in the Apple Store. All around you are the latest in iPhones, iPods, tablets laptops, headphones, speakers and lots of other wonderful marvels of modern technology. You reach into your pocket and find it’s empty of cash. You pull out the plastic and find that they’re all maxed out. An old metaphor comes to mind, evoking a becalmed ship floating on a flat sea with its crew dying of thirst: